Tomb C.3--the tomb of Amenhotep?

Amenhotep, the owner of the statue found in TT99, is surely to be identified with the owner of (formerly) lost tomb C.3. This tomb was thought to be somewhere in the area of TT61, at the top of the hill of Sheikh abd el-Qurna (Porter and Moss, Topographical Bibliography I2, 457), but in fact now turns out to have been next to TT29, not 60 m from the tomb of Senneferi!

This identification is based on the the identical nature of the name and title ('deputy overseer of sealbearers') on both monuments, and also the mention of the 'overseer of sealbearers' Sennefer in tomb C.3.

Our only record of tomb C.3 is from hand copies made by Piehl, probably sometime in the 1880s, who also gave a sketch plan of the tomb from which this is redrawn (Texts, Inscriptions hiéroglyphiques I (Stockholm-Leipzig 1886), CXLII (X) and CXLIII (Z); Plan, op. cit. II, 111).

Piehl seems to have been somewhat confused by the range of names in the inscriptions, and thought that the tomb may have been used by several individuals or even been usurped. Five persons are named in the tomb: Amenhotep, his father Ahmose and mother Neh, Renena and her father Sennefer. He felt that the part of the tomb he indicated as a-b was reserved for Renena and section c-d for Amenhotep. The logical conclusion is that Amenhotep and Renena were married, although such a division of a tomb is rather unusual. Sennefer would thus be the father-in-law of Amenhotep.

Friederike Kampp suggests that the chapel may have consisted of a pillared hall (Die Thebanische Nekropole, 618-9,. fig. 512 (her type VIIa (op. cit., 30)) and it seems probable that the room sketched by Piehl is to be orientated in the conventional south-north orientation.

Another monument of Amenhotep is a granite false door reused as flooring for a structure added to the north side of the temple of Khonsu at Karnak, perhaps in the 30th dynasty (C. Traunecker, 'La stèle fausse-porte du vice-chancelier Aménophis', Karnak 6 (1973-1977), 197-208). Traunecker's article indicates that the employment of a private false door in a temple would be unknown, and the corollary is that it came from a tomb, in effect C.3.